6 must-have practices to feel confident with your money

Today, I was presenting in a masterclass and I got asked a fantastic question, which is, what are the practices that I have around managing money? In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m going to be sharing why managing your money is so important, and some of the practices I use to stay right across my money.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money, to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money, so you can make more money with ease. Each week I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you, because you can and should be making more money.

Today’s episode of the podcast is brought to you by my upcoming program, The Profit Academy Foundations. I created this course because so many business owners do not have a good knowledge of their business finances. Now, if you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know that I’m a qualified accountant, I’m a CPA, and I’m a big believer that you have to know your money to grow your money. So I created this course to teach the accounting principles and how to manage your money in a fun and easy way. The course is launching very soon. So if you want to be one of the first people to hear about it when it launches, make sure you sign up for the wait list via the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

Why managing your money is important

Before we go into some of my practices around money, I think it’s important that we first consider the reasons why managing your money is important. So, a lot of people tell me that making more money is important to them. In fact, I would say it’s usually one of the top couple of goals that people say that they have. I want to have or to earn more money. But yet, I would say over 95% of business owners don’t have a good handle on what is actually going on with their financials in their business right now. The reason why this is important is because if you aren’t in the detail of your money, a number of things can happen. Firstly, you can feel stress around cash flow. You won’t know what is coming in and going out at any particular point in time. And that can be a large cause for stress. In fact, cash flow is one of the main reasons that small businesses fail.

The second reason is that when making investment decisions, if you don’t have clarity around what your plans are, it can be really hard to make decisions about whether you can afford to lean into an investment. Having clarity around your financial position really gives you the confidence to make investments that could seriously shift the needle in your business. And the last part of money management is keeping an eye on what has been going on in your business. So this is about having a look at your profit and loss report on a regular basis, and making sure that you really understand your business performance and the key things that are contributing to both your revenue and your expenditure, so that you can continuously be working on increasing your profitability.

These are the reasons why managing your money is important. It means more money and less stress, which in turn leads to your business success. So with that in mind, I hope that I’m showing you why managing your money is important. And I wanted to share with you some of the practices that I have around managing my money.

Keeping up-to-date with my numbers

The first thing that I do is every day is I get a daily sales update. So this means my bookkeeper sends me what my sales overnight have been, and I get a view of what my month-to-date sales have been and my year-to-date sales. Now, I totally recognize that having a permanent part-time bookkeeper is a privilege most small business owners don’t have. In fact, she has only just recently joined my team.

However, if you do not have a bookkeeper, you can still go in every day and have a look at your sales. How are they tracking for the month? Are you at any point in time able to say, yes, this is where my sales are at for the month and the year today. When I get my sales number, I also do a visual tracking against my monthly target. And this is a really fun and beautiful way to visually see how I’m progressing against the goal that I’ve set for any particular month.

Self-care practices to help with manifesting money

The next money practice that I have, and this is probably more of a woo woo one, is that every Thursday night my husband goes to squash and I have my bath night. So what I do, I run a beautiful bath, I light candles, and I either play a manifestation meditation or I listen to some beautiful music, and I just lie in the bath and visualize the things that I want to create in my life. I might read a money book in the bath, or I might even do a little bit of journaling, but this little practice is purely about me spending time focused on the future and the things that I want to create.

Money meetings to track personal and business finances

The next money practice that I have is that every Friday morning, my husband and I have a money meeting. So in the money meeting, we sit down and have a chat about all things money, both in our businesses and also in our personal lives. It’s a really great way that we can sit down and just dedicate some time to really talking about the big things when it comes to money. We talk about decisions we need to make around money, and we celebrate successes. It’s a really beautiful practice, and I love doing this every week.

The other big thing that I do with money, I forgot this, I probably should have said this one first, because it’s something I do on a Monday morning. But every Monday morning, I have a cash flow meeting. So in this meeting, I sit down with my bookkeeper and we forward forecast our cash flow. We literally have a look at what is coming in and going out and at what point in time. It’s a really fantastic way for me to feel confident about my cash position. And it can also help me make decisions in the business. So do I need to push an investment timing out, or should I consider creating something to bring some more cash in, to keep the cash in a position where I want it to be? This is something I do every Monday and it’s such a great start to the week.

Setting budgets to check in on money goals

The other practices I have around money, is that every six months I sit down and redo my budget, which is having a look at what the plans are for the next six months in terms of income and expenses and getting really excited about what the profit can look like, and really getting clear about what investments I want to make on a longer-term basis.

Accountant meetings to track business performance

And then the last thing that I do, is that every month I sit down with my accountant at the end of the month and I look back and review the month in arrears. So I have a look at the month that was, we have a chat about the performance of the business and anything that we need to be across or mindful of moving forward.

Why you should make money management intentional

So those are the key money practices that I have on a regular basis. And you might be thinking, oh my gosh, Clare, that’s a lot of time spent working on your money or spent thinking about money. But here’s the thing, that’s very intentional. A lot of people say money is important to them or that it’s one of their major goals. And yet, they’re not investing any time or effort into actually becoming better at the thing that it is they say they want to achieve. So today, I want to ask you a question, how much of your actual time and money are you putting into learning about money? If money is important to you, do you have a series of practices that you use around money? Are you carving out time to focus on something that you say is really important to you?

One of the biggest reasons that people say to me that they don’t do these things is because either they find it boring or they just really don’t know how to do it or what to be looking at. Now, on the boring front, I can’t think of anything more fun than looking at your money. Sometimes people think it’s all just about spreadsheets, but ultimately the reason you want to be across your money is because money is used to buy you things that you desire. It buys you freedom. It buys you support, in or out of your business. It buys you holidays. It buys you the nice things that you want. If these are things that you desire, then it’s well worth spending the time getting in and learning about it. There’s nothing boring about looking at something that can create fun in your life.

And the second reason is because people say they just don’t understand it. And I totally get this. As I shared earlier in the episode, from my experience, I would say most business owners do not have good financial literacy. Perhaps you’ve tried to talk to your accountant or bookkeeper about it, and it’s really overwhelming or they’re using confusing lingo. This is the exact reason that I created my course, The Profit Academy Foundations, because I know that people are just crying out to understand their numbers better.

So if you want to be one of the first people to find out when it launches, please make sure you jump on the wait list via the link in my bio. I’ll be showing you exactly how I do all of these practices I mentioned in today’s episode, such as tracking your sales, doing cash flow, creating a budget, what I cover inside my money meetings, and how I do my month-end review. This program is for anyone who wants to get right across their business finances. So please go and click on the link in the show notes for today’s episode if you want to jump in and learn about money in a fun and easy away. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode of the podcast, and I look forward to chatting money with you again next week.

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast, so I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review, and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business, because you can and should be earning more money.